


Pleasant Surprises

by phuckphace



Series: First Meetings [1]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-23
Updated: 2012-05-23
Packaged: 2017-11-05 21:22:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phuckphace/pseuds/phuckphace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Panicking, Claude froze, his fingers tightening around the handle of his cart until his knuckles were white.  He was pretty sure there were no rules of etiquette on how to act when you ran into your casual hookup in the grocery store for him to use as a guideline, and he honestly didn’t know what to say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pleasant Surprises

**Author's Note:**

> Ugh… someone take the internet away from me. I did another of these memes. This one is about first meetings. Since this one requires at least 1k words per prompt, I'll be posting this as a series instead of as a chaptered story this time. At least I used a completely different set of players this time.

2 (Danny Briere) and 8 (Claude Giroux) – at the grocery store.

Claude stopped his cart at the end of the row and looked up at the sign hanging from the ceiling boasting isle seven’s wares. It was the baking isle, and Claude didn’t do much baking, but he still mentally ran through his list to make sure. He was pretty sure he was running low on sugar, so he pointed the cart at the mouth of the isle and pushed it forward.

He was scanning the shelves looking for the sugar, when another cart appeared at the opposite end of the isle. Claude looked up at the movement, merely out of habit, and his heart almost stopped. Claude would recognize that dark hair, pale skin and soft twist of the lips anywhere. For several months they’d had a casual arrangement that had Claude spreading Danny out on his bed and touching or tasting all of those features whenever either of them felt like it; which had slowly increased in frequency and was usually at least once a week now.

Panicking, Claude froze, his fingers tightening around the handle of his cart until his knuckles were white. He was pretty sure there were no rules of etiquette on how to act when you ran into your casual hookup in the grocery store for him to use as a guideline, and he honestly didn’t know what to say. It wouldn’t be such a big problem if Claude wasn’t totally hung up in the guy though. If it was really as causal for Claude as it was for Danny, Claude would have no problem nodding his head, maybe offering a greeting and then continuing his shopping without anxiety, but the thing was he really _liked_ Danny. This thing between them was really good, but Claude wanted it to be even more, wanted an actual relationship, but every time he even hinted at that, Danny pulled back and reasserted how important it was that this stayed no strings attached. And Claude wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t going to push for more and have Danny walk away completely, because even something casual with Danny was better than nothing. Although, that really didn’t leave him with a clue about how to handle this situation.

Several feet away, Danny seemed to be having the same problem. He’d also frozen in place and the soft smile that Claude loved so much had an awkward, uneasy twist to it. It seemed neither of them knew quite what to do here.

The uneasy staring contest between them was broken up after several long seconds by three young boys rounding the corner of the shelves, laughing and the smallest shouting, “look which one I picked out Papa, ” while brandishing a brightly colored box of sugary breakfast cereal at Danny. The other two boys were more sedate about dumping their cereal selections into Danny’s cart, but they seemed to be more preoccupied with shoving and hipchecking each other than anything else at that point anyway.

Danny turned toward the boy and smiled down at him, face softening and losing the awkward edge it had only a second ago. “Well at least the box says it has calcium.”

Apparently pleased enough with that less than ringing endorsement, the boy smiled widely and dumped his box into Danny’s cart next to his brothers’ choices and then tried to join the other two in their jostling of each other and general roughhousing. 

Claude watched the entire scene play out in front of him, letting all the jumbled pieces about Danny he’d collected slide together to form a complete picture. Holy shit, Danny had _kids_. No wonder he always wanted to go back to Claude’s whenever they got together. Seconds after Claude came to that startling conclusion - while he was still trying to figure out how he felt about it and if it changed anything at all - a terrifying thought occurred to Claude: maybe Danny was married. It would certainly explain Danny’s desire to keep things casual.

Sucking in a shaking breath, Claude was helpless to stop his eyes from drifting down to Danny’s left hand. There was no ring there; Claude let out the breath. It didn’t necessarily mean anything, Claude had known married men who didn’t wear their rings before, but it was certainly less likely; Danny struck Claude as the kind of guy who’d wear a ring.

Danny turned back to Claude then, the nervous tension from before bleeding over his face. “Claude. I’d like you to meet my sons, Caelan, Carson, and Cameron.”

Claude’s instincts had rarely failed him in his life, and every instinct he had was telling him that this was a defining moment in this whatever it was he had with Danny. Danny’s kids were clearly important to him and this moment right now, the way he reacted to them could be the end of whatever they had, or it could be the beginning of trying for more. The thought of getting involved with a man that had kids was slightly terrifying, Claude was still young, and the thought of having kids of his own had never once crossed his mind, but Claude’s instincts were also telling him that Danny was worth it. And if he was honest with himself, now that the shock was wearing off, they were also telling him that even though he was scared of fucking this up that he might actually _enjoy_ being more settled down if he let himself. 

His palms were sweating, and he was sure Danny could tell that he was nervous, but he pasted a smile on his face and turned to the boys anyway. “It’s nice to meet you boys.” Claude found that it wasn’t even a lie; it _was_ nice to meet them, to be able to understand Danny better, to know more about him and what made him the person that he was. It was also a nice thought that maybe this was the reason that Danny had kept things so casual, not any desire to avoid a relationship with Claude.

The youngest, Cameron, Claude thought, turned back to Danny with a confused frown on his face. “Papa, who’s this?”

Still staring at Claude, expression unreadable, Danny answered. “This is Claude, one of Papa’s friends.”

Caelan turned toward Claude then and crossed his arms over his chest. He was clearly sizing Claude up. “Yeah? How come you’ve never come over to the house with Papa’s other friends?”

Claude blanched at the question, and he was infinitely glad that he had a really good brain to mouth filter when his first thought in answer to that was ‘because hopefully your Papa’s other friends aren’t fucking him on every available flat surface like I am;’ Claude was pretty sure that would be inappropriate. Claude normally wouldn’t advocate lying but he thought if any situation had ever called for a little misdirection, than this one did. “Because when your dad and I get together and play video games, he’s so bad and I’m so good, I beat him so bad that he cries. He probably just doesn’t want you to see that.” And if by ‘playing video games’ he meant ‘make him moan my name until he’s hoarse’ than nobody needed to know that except Claude and Danny.

The two oldest boys looked skeptical at that explanation, but Cameron’s face lit up and he smiled at Claude. “We’re really good at video games. You should come over and play with us.” His smile twisted itself until it looked a little more devious. “We could probably beat you bad enough to make you cry.”

Touched by the offer, and amused at Cameron’s less than subtle defense of his dad, Claude felt his own smile lose its nervous twist and become far more genuine even though his heart was still beating frantically in his chest. He looked up at Danny. “Only if that’s okay with your Dad.”

All three boys turned to look at Danny then, but it was Carson who finally prompted Danny when the silence stretched a little too long. “Papa?”

Danny smiled back at Claude, and when he spoke his voice sounded a little strangled. “Yeah, that – I think that would be good.”

Claude certainly hoped so.

**Author's Note:**

> Just as a teaser, here's my list of players and the upcoming prompts.
> 
> 1\. Duncan Keith  
> 2\. Danny Briere  
> 3\. Alex Ovechkin  
> 4\. Sidney Crosby  
> 5\. Brent Seabrook  
> 6\. Geno Malkin  
> 7\. Jordan Staal  
> 8\. Claude Giroux
> 
> 2\. 3 and 7 – in a long line  
> 3\. 8 and 6 – at a bar  
> 4\. 5 and 7 – at work  
> 5\. 3 and 4 – public transportation  
> 6\. 1 and 2 – in a Laundromat  
> 7\. 5 and 1 – on a blind date  
> 8\. 4 and 6 – in jail
> 
> It's weird how some of these worked out to actual pairings I can work with, and some of them... didn't.


End file.
